Scott's Run Voices
Frank Dale--Edited Interview
Colson Library C74R63
Scott’s Run
Transcriber: Kirk Hazen
Editor: Laura Brady

What follows is a series of summaries and excerpts from a June 6, 1967, interview with Frank Dale, an African American male, born around 1884. He was about 84 years old at time of the interview. The tape of this interview is on file in the West Virginia Collection in Colson Library at West Virginia University, and was transcribed by Kirk Hazen in July 2002 as part of the Writing Heritage project.

Frank Dale, born 1884

Frank Dale started working in the coal mines in 1902 when he was about 18. He began as a non-union day laborer loading coal for a dollar and a half for a 10-hour day for the Tutwiler Coal Company in Alabama. There he worked on the cutting machine, cutting coal in the mines. After Alabama, Frank moved to Thurmond, WV to work for the (Bayou?) Steel company cutting and loading coal.

In about 1922, Frank Dale moved his family briefly to Stewartsville, Ohio, doing the same job of cutting coal. He explains why he moved to Ohio:

My first wife, she almost died, got sick down there in Thurmond. Working for a fuel company. I was in the mines. All them mines. We had all those doctors come see my wife. And they doctored on her and doctored on her. Instead of getting better, she got worse and got worse. Had six doctors coming to see her. They had a doctor for every mine. We had to get her out. I had to carry her to Oak Hill and put her in the hospital. Oak Hill, West Virginia, you know where that is? That’s where they hospital was for the fuel company, in Oak Hill. Yeah, they had her clear up there. That’s where they were going and took her. And I went ahead and walked about five miles, from Carlisle West Virginia] At night, I walked from Carlisle to Oak Hill. In the night. And I walked up there to stay with her, until first thing in the morning, I walk back to Carlisle. See about those children. And trying to work too.

You see, her mother was in Wheeling. Her mother, and father, and a brother were there. And they started worrying me if I would come up to Wheeling. Stewartsville, where they was [across the river in Ohio]. And they could help me take care of my wife. And she wasn’t getting no better. And I went by one day and they called me up from the mine. Doctors did, and they called me to tell me to come and get my wife. They couldn’t do no good. I come out of the mine. Got a car, went to Oak Hill, and drove her home.

Well, I had to work. The children was all small. And I left, went up there where her mother and daddy were. Her brother and sister were up there [and that’s how come we up there]. Family did do me a lot of good. They helped us out, everyway. And I run on an old doctor there look like he just came out of the woods. . . . I had a friend, he says “I got a doctor, Frank, and if he can't do her no good, you just as well give it up. Come up there and tell him. He been my family doctor for long. Tell him I said come down and see your wife.”

He [the doctor] come down there, looked at her. Doctor said, “Well, I don’t know what to tell you, she’s so far gone, unless we lighten her blood. And if I get that blood, it ain’t doing any good.” And he give her a bottle of medicine, about that long, and said, “I mean take it. Two spoonfuls of this medicine three times. And I’ll be right back in the morning.” Give her that medicine till he came back. He come back and felt her head. No quicker than he walked in that room, she seen him, she said (she'd been awful bad off), "That’s my doctor, that’s my good doctor, he gave me good medicine.” He took her pulse, and found it, “Well, she’s better, instead of giving her two spoonfuls of that medicine, give her two teaspoonfuls. And I’ll be back again a day tomorrow.” He come back, like before, with a larger bottle of that medicine. And when that bottle of medicine give out, she was up and kicking. Brought her right on up and did her a lot of good. Oh, it was 1922 I believe.

He came to the Scotts Run area about eight months later in 1922 to work for the First Place [?] Coal Company. Frank describes the move:

[The superintendent in Ohio] asked me , “Where you going Frank?” And I said, “I’m going to look for me a job where I know it’s safe.” He said, “Go up there, Morgantown.” And he says to me, “I know you’re trying”. [Just get off at B&E oil, cross the state line, and Morgantown will be right there. Place was called [Sun] then. “You go on to Sun, go up there to my office, and ask for Bill Stewart.” Says, “Ask for Bill Stewart and tell him I sent you down there. . . .You tell Bill you run a cutting machine; you go in the mine and start cutting some coal”

I come down there in a [passenger train]. He gave me a job. Next day he told me to look at the mines. I looked at the mines. Nice mines down there. Good news, now I could cut coal. Down in number eight. Called number two now.

Next day, he’s showing me the mines. . . .He was a big man, big guy. He said, “Give this man the [best] job in the house [OR give this man a job in the hole] My family’s in Stewartsville .

Bill said, “I’m having a car sent in, sidetracked in Stewartsville. Let him go on and [then] come back and go to work. Well, I went back, loaded my family up, two or three days, I was back. Been here ever since.

There were a few other African Americans in Scotts Run back in 1925, 1926. Frank lived in a company town at Pursglove. The miners had to pay rent, rent taken out of their pay, for company housing. They had a company store and a company doctor and they used scrip. When asked how much he earned, Frank replied:

If I cut with a shovel, I got paid by the foot--four cent a foot--if I cut it four feet deep and three feet high, I got so much a ton [for cutting], and the man load the coal got so much a ton. I got four cents a ton. And the man helping me [load], he got three.

Frank later built a home in Granville where he lived for twenty four years. He explains why he moved:

I got rid of my home over in Granville. I had a home over there, pretty good lot too. And then I bought this one. Children all married and gone. Nobody but me and the old lady here. I had to drive every morning, going over here to work nd then every night back home, so I bought this place here.

Now, my wife’s dead, my first wife, she’s dead. Her picture’s on the wall here. Mother to ten children-- three girls and four boys, and three boys dead. Children all married off and left. One boy in Pittsburgh. One living in Louisville. One lives in Denver, Colorado. One live up here on Cassville, here. I had a daughter in Cleveland. She died the week before last [of pneumonia]. I have four boys living, two girls. Now. Well, I’m sticking here yet. Of course, I don’t try to work no more.

This is my second wife. My [first] wife’s been dead about three years. I go on and married this woman. Couldn’t live by myself. I’ve been here a long time.

Frank retired in 1949 from Continental Coal.

Unions

Frank Dale was a member of the union in West Virginia and in Ohio. When asked what the coal company tried to do to break the union in 1922, Frank said.

Oh, a lot of stuff. Hired guards here. All up and down the road. Hired pile drivers with bb shot guns. All over the hills with spotlights down all over the hollow, so as to try to keep anybody from going in there.

I stood on the [striking line] in moonlight all night. Moonlight all night. I think that was along ’23, ’22 when that happened. When I got there, the union [men] went on strike. Independents driving all the union workers out. Drove them out again.

Church

Frank tells about the church he helped build. He was president of the local union in about 1927 and they got the church. The coal company paid for the construction, but deeded the church to the community:

I helped build, I was part of the first church, ever in this hollow --[Treeline] Baptist church. We have the oldest church in the hollow. It was right down here. Number two, number eight, that’s the hollow. It’s down there now.

We didn’t have nothing but a little shanty, where the sun is, about the size of that shack. Bill Stewart, chairman for the coal company hired me, Cliff T., Kevin Cliff T. Just two of us. Until July, we just built up that church. We done painted it. Put the doors on the meeting hall. If you need something, and you’re in need to do it, well then you do it, If you didn’t do it, you didn’t need no . . Bill Stewart said, “Just as long as y’all work for the Purseglove Coal Company, this is your church.” He sold out in ’45. Everything started falling apart--everything except that church. We had a deed to that church. Give us the deed to the church, and the deed said as long as this building is used for the purpose of service, respect all these colored people, anytime it’s used for anything else, except service, it goes back to the coal company. I’m not kidding you. And that’s how it goes, colored people. Of course we pick anybody into coming. We got [members] from everywhere now. We got them some here from [Mainesfield], come here from Cassville, some here from Morgantown.

Ku Klux Klan

Frank talks about the racial prejudices and the presence of the KKK.

None of them had colored up there because all the members of the [salaried] were Ku Klux. They’d threaten you. Shoot you too if they thought they had the chance. They just didn’t like colored people. Just like that night. Owned a house in Thurmond, and I bought here. I bought this house, and they said I couldn’t live here. There was a man living in this house when I bought it. Originally, I bought it from Sam [Kaluha], in Morgantown, a young man lived here all his life. He didn’t care [what color I was] He said he knew I worked hard. I bought that house, that’s mine. Ain’t nobody tell me now what I’m going to do with mine.

Politics

Frank discusses the shifts between the Democrat and Republican parties between the late 1920’s and the early 1930’s:

A lot of [people/miners] became democrats . . after Roosevelt. [A lot of them were Republicans before]. You know, it just depends. There’s just a whole lot of stuff in people’s heads. You have the people who didn’t know no better. And you got people doing talking, going to the country. Talked some people into changing. Talking up. . . Black man’s freedom.

Some switched in ‘32, after you got Roosevelt in and he did so much worse than Hoover and all the rest of the presidents with Lincoln and the rest of them had ever done. [As we were raised as kids, the colored, you hope for more, and a lot of them came to be democrats.]